LAC-MÉGANTIC, QUE.—The man behind the company at the heart of the tragic train derailment and explosions in Lac-Mégantic, Que., is a railroad veteran with a reputation for cost-cutting.

Edward Burkhardt finally arrived Wednesday in the tight-knit Quebec town of 6,000, where he told residents and the media that Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railways had a good safety record, despite mounting information suggesting otherwise, and defending measures to trim expenditures.

“We went through a very difficult period in the aftermath of the big financial meltdown,” Burkhardt told reporters, who shouted questions at him on a Lac-Mégantic street. “MMA has operated in a very difficult market so it’s got to be our objective to haul our costs down.”

The trend goes back a long way.

Burkhardt, now 74, led privatization efforts in New Zealand in the 1990s, work that earned him a title as honorary consul for the country.

In 1999, Burkhardt started Rail World Inc., a “management, consulting and investment corporation specializing in privatizations and restructurings.”

The company, of which Burkhardt serves as president and CEO, promotes privatization of the rail industry, according to its website.

Rail World bought Iron Road Railways in January 2003 and renamed it Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway. It runs trains on about 820 kilometres of track in Maine, Vermont, Quebec and New Brunswick.

According to a report in the Bangor Daily News, Burkhardt slashed wages by 40 per cent because of the bankruptcy of a major rail customer.

Over the years it tried to sell millions worth of track due to poor profits and declining conditions and in May 2010, it announced plans to save $4.5 million by halving crews on locomotives by replacing them with remote-control devices, according to the report.

In 2012, Transport Canada granted MMA rare permission to operate a train with only one engineer on board.

Railway Age magazine has named him Railroader of the Year.

Burkhardt is president of the San Luis Central Railroad Company and on the board of directors of the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway. He’s chair of railways in Estonia, where he led railroad privatization in 2001, only to have the government re-purchase the railway six years later.

He’s also a chair at Rail Polska, a Polish company that’s rapidly expanding in the deregulated European rail marketplace, according to Rail World’s website.

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